"I would have you simple concerning evil," says Paul writing to the Romans. It is better that we should live in childish ignorance both of the secret and the science of sin. There is no use of learning that which we intend to have nothing to do with, or of handling tools which we do not propose to use. We don't want even a bowing acquaintance with sin; for it will certainly improve the first opportunity to shake hands with us, and very soon call upon us in order to cultivate our acquaintance. "Be not deceived; . . . evil communications corrupt good manners." The sight of sin familiarizes us with its face, and so tends to lessen our abhorrence of it; and the least communication, whether by thought or by word, with evil, helps to lessen our aversion to that evil.434
It is not true in the matter of sin that familiarity breeds contempt. The shadow makes us acquainted with a substance. Therefore we are to "abstain from all appearance of evil."
And yet it is well for us to remember that just the opposite idea is very largely in vogue, even among Christians. We have heard such sayings as this: "I let my children go once or twice to the theater when they are young, so that they may know what it is, and so they will not be likely to care to go afterward, since their curiosity has become satisfied." And we heard of a Christian father saying, not long since, "I keep wine on my table in order that my children may become familiar with the taste and sight of it, and then they won't care for it when they grow up." That is certainly not according to the code of Paul and of Jesus Christ. "I would have you simple concerning evil." It is certainly just according to the satanic school of instruction; for that school lays out for a very gradual training in sin. The remoter senses of sight and hearing are first tamed, before a closer contact with taste and touch are attempted. "You can see a thing and hear a thing, and yet be far enough away for safety," it is said. And so the evil one concedes our proposition, and does not attempt to come nearer to us than an ear-shot at first, or closer than the longest range of eyesight. And he gets permission to hang alluring pictures all along the shop-windows, and to post the conspicuous signs of his trade upon the wayside, and to fling snatches of his music among the crowd upon the streets, and to breathe out the incense of his worship in the smoke and odors of conviviality, which emanate from fashionable resorts of pleasure.
As yet he has come no nearer than sight and hearing and smell. The senses of experience, taste and touch, have not yet been assailed. But these graduation into the higher degrees of evil is not hard, when once we have consented to become a candidate. It is not the hideous and repulsive features of evil which I most fear in our great cities. It is the artistic shapes, and the delicate outlines, and the most modest suggestions of impurity which are everywhere brought to the front. It is the rudimentary training in evil, the songs and sights and pictures and plays, which are just sufficiently tinged with suggestions of sin to make them apt teachers to thought and imagination, that are inclined to be led astray. The outposts of virtue and temperance are quietly captured from those who have been too careless to guard them, and in a little while the citadel is stormed, and the enemy comes in like a flood.
The college of evil, alas, graduates a larger portion of those that enter upon her earlier courses than the college of good; and for the reason that she graduates downward instead of upward. The natural desires and affections are like water: they run down hill easily enough; but it takes a constant pumping and a powerful lifting to make them run up hill. And the tempter only asks for a slight lowering of the grade of virtue, and a little rift in the obstructions to evil, in order that he may turn the whole current of a man's life downward. Ah! there is the thing to be dreaded in our social life—the endless arts and contrivances for rendering the young acquainted with evil. The neutral pleasures and enjoyments that serve as go-betweens to introduce men to positive sin, and mild fictions, and captivating plays, the barely questionable pictures and engravings, the just doubtful ministrants to taste and appetite—here, on this border-land of virtue, is where we need to build our forts and defences. We are greatly struck with the recent statement of a young man that there are houses which distribute certain mild cigarettes and certain neutral beverages among the clerks entirely gratuitously, simply from the conviction that they are thereby planting a crop of appetites which in a little while will yield them a rich harvest of customers. And that is good economy. "Whatsoever a man soeth that shall he reap." The great husbandman of evil is not going simply to attend to the harvest that grows spontaneously for his sickle. He is a great planter as well as a great reaper. "And while men slept," says Jesus, "the enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat"—the invisible germs of evil concealed in the good seed of sin put into the true grain of righteousness. Never does he shock men by the sight of pure wickedness and unmixed sin. Every lie he propagates he conceals in the husk of truth. Every drop of poison which he instills he dilutes and dissolves with a vastly larger per cent. of pleasant nourishment. And he imposes on us because we think that a little grain of evil is harmless, provided it be overbalanced by a far greater proportion of good. Oh, to learn the great lesson that even the knowledge of evil is dangerous. And it is dangerous because it is a deceptive object, seen through a deceptive medium. If with pure reason and cool logic we could study sin, and analyze its secrets, it might be an advantage. But that is not the way in which men do look at it. For one who studies sin under the microscope of cold and unimpassioned reason, like the theologian Muller, there are ten thousand who study it with a heart inclined to evil. And "the heart," we are told, "is deceitful above all things," and therefore it is certain to be a poor student. It colors that sin with a hue of its own desires; it invests it with the charm of its own passions; it minimizes it with its own excusing affections. And thus the acquaintance with evil is a deceptive and misleading acquaintance, and an acquaintance which is almost certain to lead into fellowship and indulgence.
A great painter said, "I do not allow myself to look at a bad picture for fear my brush may take a hint from it." Would that such a rule were generally followed. A great university brings out an old Greek play, and all the city is stirred with excitement over its performance. The play is founded upon a grossly immoral story. But there is the lesson of retribution running through all the plot, and this is counted a sufficient reason for calling the young to witness it, and raising a great excitement in polite and literary circles over its rendering. An immoral story with great pomp and circumstances of art and scenic splendor, for the sake of the underlying moral! When was there greater need of emphasizing and enforcing these deep words of the apostle than now? "I would have you simple concerning evil."—The Watchword.